A US decision to cut funding for the UN’s Relief and Works Agency, the body that caters to Palestinian refugees who in Gaza number 1.3 million or some two-thirds of the population, could push the situation there over the brink.

Sixty years on, the Kafr Qasim massacre is a stark reminder of the buried past of the world’s ‘most moral army.’

"Demolition and seizure of service infrastructure in Palestinian communities in Area C exacerbates risk of forcible transfer" (OCHA, Oct 11, 2017): click here!

The targeting of key service infrastructure in already vulnerable communities in Area C in recent months has exacerbated the coercive environment and places residents at risk of forcible transfer. In August, on the eve of the new school year, the Israeli authorities requisitioned nine educational-related structures serving 170 children in three such communities.

Mariam BARGHOUTI: "Palestinian Women Are Harassed And Humiliated At Checkpoints. Here Are A Few Of Their Stories" (EI, Oct 6, 2017): click here!

Since 1967, about 40% of the Palestinian male population has been detained by Israel. With their men in jail, Palestinian women are left to continue surviving and ensuring the well-being of their families. From confronting increased Israeli violations to earning a living while also being caregivers, Palestinian women have had to pick up twice the weight, while living under the pressures of Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank.

Until June, Palestinian politics seemed deadlocked, with no prospect of unity, no progress with Israel and no hope for Gaza. Then, two initiatives, both involving Hamas, and the latest promising a breakthrough on reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, came along right after each other.

Israeli authorities will completely seal off the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip for 11 consecutive days over the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, when only humanitarian, medical, and exceptional cases will be allowed to exit or enter the territories, according to Israeli media reports.

The family of first-grader Jalaluddin Abdul Hadi was still hunting for schools a week after the school year started on Aug. 23. They managed to find a place for him at a public primary school close to their home in central Ramallah...

The feeling of déjà vu that enveloped the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah last Thursday was especially somber. Here we were, once again, standing around on a Friday afternoon, struggling against the eviction and dispossession of Palestinian families.

Hussein AGHA and Ahmad Samih KHALIDI, “The End of This Road: The Decline of the Palestinian National Movement” " (The New Yorker, Aug 6, 2017): click here!

As President Trump prepares for yet another attempt to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the ground is shifting under his feet. While Israel’s willingness to offer an acceptable deal is increasingly open to question, with nothing to suggest that its terms are likely to soften with time, the Palestinians are sliding toward the unknown.

Why did Israel revoke the press credentials of Al Jazeera correspondent Elias Karam? He has not been accused of inciting violence. He did not commit the ultimate sin of calling for anti-Israel sanctions. He has not even advocated a boycott of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

As internal Palestinian rifts take a heavy toll on Gazans and as shifting geopolitics in the Gulf affect quality of life in Deir al-Balah, Israel is again missing an opportunity to harness the future of its relationship with Gaza.

Israeli authorities forcibly halted the construction of a school in Jubbet Al-Dhib village in the eastern part of Bethlehem in the southern occupied West Bank on Thursday, despite Palestinians receiving an Israeli-issued building permit for the project.

Israel’s revocations of the residency status of thousands of Palestinians from East Jerusalem over the years illustrates the two-tiered system Israel maintains in the city, Human Rights Watch said today. The residency system imposes onerous requirements on Palestinians to maintain their status, with significant consequences for those who don’t.

For most of the 2 million people in this overcrowded strip of land – largely cut off from the outside world – the beach and sea are the only affordable form of recreation. The only option now is to swim and even fish in filthy water.

Earlier this month, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) announced a new deal in which Israel will sell the Palestinians 33 million cubic meters of desalinated Red Sea water per year, with 10 million cubic meters transferred to the Gaza Strip and the rest to the West Bank.

it’s the first time in their 50-year struggle against occupation that Palestinians are well and truly alone. Never has the gulf between the Arab street and their governments yawned as wide as it has this week over Palestine.

The policy of collective punishment practiced by the Israeli occupation is a violation of most basic and internationally recognized rights, including the right to freedom of religion, the right to freedom of movement, the right to privacy and self-determination.

According to international law and Israeli courts no one can be detained for their political opinions. This is affirmed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, article 2, which states that states parties are to ensure “to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinions, national or social origin, property, birth or other status”.

Jonathan OFIR: "The long and under-reported history of Judeo-Christian terror around Al-Aqsa” (Mondoweiss, July 23, 2017): click here!

The current Palestinian protests, related to the shootings at Al-Aqsa compound in East Jerusalem over a week ago and subsequent Israeli altering of security arrangements at the site, could, as some Israeli analysts observe, “turn into an intifada in the blink of an eye.” (Nir Hasson in Haaretz).

The new report on Gaza by a team led by Robert Piper, the United Nations’ chief humanitarian coordinator in Palestine, makes for disturbing reading... Yet what the report actually does is reveal how the UN has apparently aligned with Israel and its international backers in pushing for Gaza’s total surrender to its tormentors.

It began in 1967 with the expulsion of hundreds of Arab Jerusalemites from the area of the Western Wall, and continues with a series of Jewish triumphalist projects seeking to blot out the presence of Arabs.

“Israeli military incursions into Palestinian communities often have fatal consequences for children,” Ayed Abu Eqtaish, a program director at Defense for Children International - Palestine, stated. “Israeli forces routinely employ intentional lethal force in complete disregard of international law, increasingly placing Palestinian children at risk.”

Haidar EID: "Gaza and the failure of the national project” (EI, July 14, 2017): click here!

In order to understand the draconian measures taken by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority against the Gaza Strip, which has already been enduring a suffocating, decade-long Israeli siege, one has to scrutinize the Fatah movement’s diminished ideological and national agenda.

Political players both in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and the region are repositioning themselves after the recent emergence of a coalition between Hamas and Mohammed Dahlan, the former leader of Fatah in Gaza and Hamas’s long-standing enemy, as well as the sanctions placed on Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt.

The deeply unpopular Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is helping Israeli occupation authorities inflict horrendous suffering on people in the blockaded Gaza Strip, as part of a cruel and cynical political game.

The stories read like dispatches from a nightmare, describing a reality that is almost too extreme to fathom: nearly 2 million people locked inside a land mass the size of Philadelphia, the borders carefully controlled, the movement of goods and humans severely restricted; as much as 72 percent of the population facing food insecurity and 41 percent struggling with unemployment.

Since 1967, Israel created and consistently expanded the criteria for revoking the residency status of Palestinians, leading to the revocation of the residency rights of more than 14,500 Palestinians from Jerusalem to date.

Israeli soldiers injured, on Sunday at night, at least 35 Palestinians, including one who suffered a life-threatening injury after being shot with a rubber-coated steel bullet in the eye, after the army attack a funeral procession in occupied East Jerusalem.

Israeli raids in Palestinian towns, villages, and refugee camps are a daily occurrence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with a weekly average of 95 search and detention raids carried out over the course 2016, according to UN documentation.

The Palestinian village of Sarura was destroyed in 1997 and its residents have not returned for fear of settler violence. Dozens of Jewish volunteers from the U.S., Canada and Australia have joined Palestinian activists in renovating it.

Our day in Umm al Kheir started with a common flying checkpoint, set up by the Israeli forces in Zif. Our mini-bus driver dind’t want to pass this control so we got out of the car and walked through the control and then waited for our friend from the village to pick us up.

As anywhere all over the world, Palestinian Muslims are celebrating the end of the fasting-month Ramadan with the 3-day feast of Eid. Eid usually is a joyous occasion, everyone dresses up nicely and the most important activity is visiting family.

Judy MALZ: "Americans Disproportionately Leading the Charge in Settling the West Bank” (Haaretz, June 23, 2017): click here!

Are they being nudged there by the stealth efforts of the Israeli government and its NGO allies?

Bradley BURSTON: "Israel's Plague of Darkness for Gazans Is an Act of Terrorism” (Haaretz, June 21, 2017): click here!

It's the worst thing Israel's done all year. It's a punishment which targets huge numbers of people who have committed no crime.

"JOINT PRESS RELEASE: (PHROC) denounces the decision to reduce the power supply to the Gaza Strip and warns of a humanitarian disaster ” (Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, June 21, 2017): click here!

The Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC) strongly denounces the decision of the Israeli Occupying Authorities to reduce the amount of electricity provided to the Gaza Strip. PHROC further warns the international community of the dangerous repercussions of this decision, which could exacerbate the humanitarian crisis which Gaza has been under due to Israel’s 10-year long closure.

Israel reduced its supply of electricity to the occupied Gaza Strip on Monday morning, in spite of warnings from human rights groups that the move violates international law. The cuts come despite dire warnings in recent weeks from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Health Organization and UN officials that the induced electricity shortage is causing a humanitarian catastrophe, as essential health, water and sanitation facilities cannot function.

Study shows how ambivalent Israeli policies and denial of the problem have created a status that doesn't exist anywhere else on earth: Native-born residents who are not citizens of the state in whose capital they live.

Israeli authorities on Friday rescinded 250,000 Israel entry permits from Palestinians hours after a deadly attack in Jerusalem left four dead and several injured, a spokesperson for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) told Mondoweiss.

My last visit to Gaza had been in May 2014, just before Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, an assault that resulted in the deaths of more than two thousand Gazans – combatants and civilians – and the destruction of eighteen thousand homes. When I went back less than three years later the changes were evident everywhere.

Michael FRIEDMAN: "Why has the Israeli occupation lasted so long? It’s good for business” (Mondoweiss, June 6, 2017): click here!

The occupation represents a source for Israel in two senses: economically, it provides a testing ground for the development of weapons, security systems, models of population control and tactics without which Israel would be unable to compete in the international arms and security markets...

Fifty years after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it controls these areas through repression, institutionalized discrimination, and systematic abuses of the Palestinian population’s rights, Human Rights Watch said today.

It’s also convenient to issue the endless daily lies that cover up the crimes committed by the Israel Defense Forces, the Border Police, the Shin Bet, the Prison Service and the Civil Administration – the entire apparatus of occupation.

Since 1967, the settlements have grown into Israel's greatest national project. Nearly a million Israeli citizens live beyond the Green Line, while their Palestinian neighbors live under military rule. A journey to the heart of the West Bank with Dror Etkes, the man who has dedicated the last two decades to monitoring the goings on in Israel's backyard.

“The occupation denies Palestinians control over basic aspects of daily life, whether they live in the Gaza Strip or in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” according to a report released Wednesday by the UN humanitarian coordination agency OCHA.

"UN report: Occupation is the main cause of humanitarian needs in the occupied Palestinian territory " (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), May 31, 2017): click here!

Earlier this month, the ICRC warned that Gaza is on the brink of “systemic collapse”.
Nearly seven years have passed since the ICRC noted that “The whole of Gaza’s civilian population is being punished for acts for which they bear no responsibility”, that “the closure therefore constitutes a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law”, and that “the dire situation in Gaza cannot be resolved by providing humanitarian aid”.

A months-long strike ended this week when the Civil Administration agreed to reexamine procedures concerning access to farmland beyond the West Bank separation barrier. Have the reasons for the strike really disappeared? Time will tell.

The Palestinian local elections held May 13 showed that Palestinians voted for tribal and independent lists instead of political lists, giving serious cause for concern.

Haidar EID: "On Gaza and the horror of the siege" (Mondoweiss, May 25, 2017): click here!

In mid-May, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned of the imminent collapse of the Gaza Strip saying, in a grim statement, that: “The scarcity of energy and the severe shortage of fuel in Gaza have damaged all aspects of life in the Strip…”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged that Al-Aqsa Mosque – which he called the Temple Mount – will remain in Jewish control forever, local media have reported. He made this pledge just one day after the visit of US President Donald Trump to the region.

No amount of denial, however sophisticated, will spare Israel from the dire perils of occupation, and no combination of bullying, bluster and hasbara will bring Israeli Jerusalem the recognition it deserves.

The organised collective hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners headed by imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti has evolved into a fast spreading mobilisation of the Palestinians. Outside the prison walls, Palestinians have put the Palestinian Authority and its lone calls for a day of rage to shame.

Detention raids conducted by Israeli forces between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning in several villages across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem sparked clashes in at least three cases, according to Israeli and Palestinian sources. Three Palestinians were reported to have been shot in the northern West Bank.

Gaza is on the brink of a “systemic collapse” as the electricity crisis deepens, the International Committee of the Red Cross is warning. “Severe power and fuel shortage has reached a critical point in Gaza, endangering essential services including healthcare, wastewater treatment and water provision,” the ICRC said on Tuesday.

The Palestinian security sector employs around half of all civil servants, accounts for nearly $1 billion of the PA budget, and receives around 30% of total international aid disbursed to the Palestinians. The security sector consumes more of the PA’s budget than the education, health, and agriculture sectors combined.

After reports emerged last week that the Israeli government was preparing to advance 15,000 new settlement units in occupied east Jerusalem in contravention of international law, settlement watchdog Peace Now said they were “deeply concerned” over the implications of the possible settlement expansions.

The Palestinian leadership knows better than Trump that a peace agreement with Israel is farther away than the end of his term. But the leadership allows itself to expect that Trump, a businessman, will understand the severity of Israel’s economic restrictions, and will intervene to soften them.

Tareq BACONI: "Hamas’s new charter is a historic first step" (The Guardian, May 2, 2017): click here!

Concerns remain, but efforts to distance the group from antisemitism are an opportunity to be grasped.

Israel is to hold lavish celebrations over the coming weeks to mark the 50th anniversary of what it calls the “liberation of Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights” – or what the rest of us describe as the birth of the occupation.

Fifteen years ago this month the Israeli army bombarded and assaulted the Jenin refugee camp for more than 10 days. This was part of Israel’s so-called Operation Defensive Shield, during which it sent troops into the heart of six major cities in the occupied West Bank and surrounding towns and refugee camps that were ostensibly under Palestinian Authority control.

Israel stands accused of worsening a crisis in Gaza’s livestock sector.
Earlier this year, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease occurred in Gaza. For 17 days, Israel blocked the entry of vaccines required to prevent the virus from spreading, according to Gaza’s veterinary services.

Despite disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005 by removing its illegal settlements, Israel continues to maintain a total chokehold on Gaza in a myriad of ways. At times, Israel has displayed its control with violence, such as the Gaza War of 2008/09 (Operation Cast Lead), and the subsequent bloody Israeli offensives of 2012 and 2014. These acts of aggression have put Palestinians in an exhausting state of precarity: constantly rebuilding and constructing their infrastructure, often lacking the necessary materials and tools to do so.

The recent decision of the Palestinian Authority (PA) consensus government in Ramallah to cut 30 percent of the monthly salaries of thousands of civil servants and former security officers in the Gaza Strip had on Wednesday outraged the coastal enclave’s populations.

When civilian security officers are dictating policy on the ground, to whom should Palestinian farmers in Urif turn?

Amira HASS: "The PA Won’t Employ Violence Against Its Own Citizens, and They in Turn Won’t Accuse It of Treason" (Haaretz, April 2, 2017): click here!

The beginning of the report discussed the widespread feelings of frustration among the Palestinian public, and especially the young, due to the absence of a political horizon and the high unemployment, as well as the feeling of a lack of personal security due to the Israeli occupation regime and its daily assaults (especially in the refugee camps), executions and arrests. The settlement enterprise, the report added, gives Palestinians a feeling that their very existence, and that of their children, in this land is under threat.

Israeli bulldozers demolished two Palestinian homes in Jabal al-Mukabbir in occupied East Jerusalem on Wednesday morning without prior notice, under the pretext that the structures lacked licenses required by Israel’s Jerusalem municipality.

Systematic, acute, malicious discrimination in access to water in the West Bank and Gaza, combined with massive resource theft, is operated by the occupation authorities and the private water company Mekorot.

Over 14,000 Arabs have had their residency rights revoked since 1967 because they were absent from Jerusalem for more than 7 years. Court ruling challenges practice that treated them like immigrants in their own city.

For Mahmoud Abbas, cooperating with Israel’s military occupation is “sacred.” It is so sacred that Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, apparently bragged about jailing the intellectual and resistance fighter Bassel al-Araj less than a year before his assassination.

The seething mass of blood, dust and fear that was hidden behind the dry headlines that summer of 2014 is the focus of a documentary by a Gazan filmmaker who spent the war in an ambulance.

"PHROC condemns the assault on the peaceful assembly that took place in front of the Palestinian Court Complex and warns of the consequences of the violations of rights and freedoms" (Addameer, March 13, 2017): cliquez ici!.

The Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council followed up on the Palestinian Security Forces’ forceful assault on the peaceful assembly that took place on Sunday, March 12, 2017 in front of the Palestinian Court Complex in Al-Balou’ area in Al-Bireh City.

Israeli forces killed a prominent Palestinian activist during a raid on a home in the town of al-Bireh, near the city of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, on Monday.

A video shows that Nidal Mahdawi, a mentally unstable Palestinian on his way to visit his wife and kids in Israel, could have been arrested without being shot.

Aline BATARSEH: "The challenges of being Palestinian in East Jerusalem" (Mondoweiss, Feb 22, 2017): click here!.

Uncertainty. Loss. Instability. These are the words that come to mind when I think of my life as a Palestinian. The loss of homeland is a recent and continuing experience for us. I don’t know a single Palestinian who hasn’t mourned the loss of a home, a plot of land, a loved one, or all of the above, as a result of political circumstances.

When you say extreme violence carried out by settlers with official encouragement, you think of Hebron. (With apologies for leaving out of the discussion all the other settlements that enjoy a full measure of transfer-advocating violence.

The Israeli military court at Ofer prison sentenced 15-year-old Ahmad al-Khadour to 91 days in prison and a 3,000-shekel fine (approximately $810), after the boy was accused of throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers.

Ben Ehrenreich, author of The Way to the Spring, the chronicle of heroic resistance to occupation in a Palestinian village, spoke at Columbia’s Center for Palestine Studies a week ago, and described Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as an “incremental genocide.”

The Arab Organisation for Human Rights has revealed that the Palestinian Authority summonsed and arrested 2,214 Palestinian citizens during 2016, Quds Press reported on Tuesday. In a report, the organisation said that the data it has collected showed an increase in the arrest and summons of Palestinians for political and union activities.

Hours a day, every day, at every gate in the separation fence, at every checkpoint, at every vehicle inspection post, Palestinians' lives come to a halt as they wait for armed Israeli soldiers to let them go past”.

Griff WITTE: "Israeli settlements grew on Obama’s watch. They may be poised for a boom on Trump’s" (The Washington Post, Jan 2, 2017): click here!.

Soldiers raided the Faraa refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, shooting dead one Palestinian and arresting three.

The past year has been a deadly and violent one for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip. In 2016 alone, more than 100 Palestinians were killed, the majority shot dead by Israeli forces.

Israel demolished more Palestinian homes in the occupied territory in 2016 than in any year since the United Nations began documenting demolitions in 2009, while Israel also increased restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the occupied territory in 2016.

Israel’s Jerusalem municipality demolished Palestinian-owned structures in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan on Wednesday, under the pretext that they lacked Israeli-issued building permits, according to local organization the Wadi Hilweh Information Center.

At the southern edge of Jabal Mukaber, a Palestinian neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, the hills form a wide, natural amphitheatre. Here olive groves adorn the gentle slopes, horses whinny, and birds flit out from the eaves to play in the evening sky. The views out towards Herod’s great fortress Herodion are breathtaking.

“I have survived the past three wars, but that is not the problem. In this place, wars come and go. The bigger struggle is not to lose hope. The only way I can do that is to retreat, and create my own world, and become oblivious."

Contrary to Israeli criticism, UNESCO's resolution on Temple Mount has nothing to do with staking religious claims, and even includes some wins for Israel. If Israel wants the world to recognize Judaism's link to Jerusalem, it must sit down and talk to the Palestinians.

When the wave of Palestinian violence broke out, most of the assailants were youngsters who believed that their acts would bring closer Palestinian statehood; but recent attacks seem motivated largely by religious beliefs.

Is Israel on the brink of a new wave of terror? According to senior Palestinian security officials, the writing was on the wall from the minute Avigdor Liberman assumed office in late May as Israel’s defense minister and dictated a carrot-and-stick policy of rewards and punishments for Palestinian villages, depending on the origins of Palestinian assailants.

Every time a police officer closes a store with no legal justification, it just makes it all the more clear to the local residents and the rest of the world that East Jerusalem is occupied territory by any law.

The prolonged period of slow economic growth has resulted in persistently high unemployment and stagnation in the average income of Palestinian citizens, according to the latest World Bank report on the Palestinian economy. The economy will not be able to reach its potential without a peace resolution but meaningful steps can avoid further deterioration.

Launched this month, as much of the world was on holiday, Avigdor Lieberman’s plan for the Palestinians – retooling Israel’s occupation – received less attention than it should. Defence minister since May, Lieberman has been itching to accelerate Israel’s annexation by stealth of the West Bank.

On the early morning of August 20, 2016 the Israeli settlers from Bitar Eliet settlement opened the sewage water on the fields of the Palestinian farmers in Hussan village which is located west of Bethlehem. More than 40 dunums (1 dunum = 1000 m2) of cultivated lands was affected by the sewage water damage. These fields were owned by 12 families from Hussan.

The Israel Defense Forces have been carrying out regular operations in the Dheisheh refugee camp and the villages of Hebron governorate, all inside West Bank's Area A and ostensibly under full Palestinian control.

The Commissioner of Intentional Relations of the Fatah Movement, Nabil Shaath, has said in a statement that 62% of Palestinian lands in the West Bank have been turned into Israeli settlements, and the number of Israeli settlers has doubled five times since the signing of the Oslo agreement in 1993. Shaath added during a meeting with a delegation of Palestinians living in Israel, “The number of Israeli settlers has increased from 160,000 to 780,000 since signing the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993.”

“The olive is important for our food security and our cultural representation. It is a symbol of our identity. The trees connect us to our land, to a place, to a history and to past generations. They also link us to future generations, to our children and grandchildren. They represent the continuity of a nation and our rootedness in the land.”

A report this week said that the school in the Bedouin community of Khan al Ahmar is reportedly facing demolition by the Israeli Government. A petition by a settler group to the Israeli High Court of Justice seeking to compel the Israeli Government to execute the demolition order on the school is under review. The State has requested for and has been granted an extension until the 23 August 2016.

Pollution, salinity and rationing are threatening Gaza’s water supply. In Jabalia Refugee Camp, north of Gaza, children and old women carrying plastic bottles gather near water taps to fill them with drinking water from a newly established artesian well set up by the municipality.

Arik ASCHERMAN: "Idolatry and Causeless Hatred in War Against Susya, Umm Al-Hiran, El-Araqib and Umm Al-Khir" (The Times of Israel, Aug 15, 2016): click here!

Today we observed the Tisha B’Av fast. Our sages taught that the First Temple was destroyed because of bloodshed, idolatry and sexual crimes. The Second Temple was destroyed because of causeless hatred. Susya is one of the many Palestinian communities on both sides of the Green Line today facing destruction, expulsion and dispossession.

On Aug. 13, Israeli and international human rights organizations will hold another round of protest activities in the Khirbet Susya village in the West Bank in the South Hebron Hills. The activists, who view the Susya campaign as their life work, have recently learned that their protests have borne fruit: The US administration, as well as the European Union and Britain, warned Israel not to demolish the village and expel its residents.

Israeli authorities carried out multiple demolitions across the occupied West Bank on Tuesday morning, including residential structures funded by the European Union, in the midst of an unprecedented campaign targeting Palestinian homes, business, and agricultural structures under the pretext of lacking building permits which are nearly impossible to obtain.

For years, Israeli politicians exploited the phrase "ein partner" (there is no partner) in order to dodge substantive peace negotiations with the Palestinians. These days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps repeating that it’s “a myth that Israeli construction in the West Bank is an obstacle to peace.” But as we know, simply repeating something doesn’t make it true; reality shows that the settlements are precisely that - a major impediment to peace.

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) National Bureau to Defend Land released a statement Saturday warning of the “dangerous” consequences of Israel's policy of legalizing illegal settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, in response to recent recommendations by an Israeli government committee seeking to relocated evacuees of the Amona outpost to privately-owned Palestinian land.

The Israeli government and its supporters routinely play down the significance of West Bank settlements as an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians. One recent example of this came from a Jewish Agency spokesperson, who tweeted: “Jewish communities in the West Bank take up under 2% of the land; that is, over 98% of the West Bank contains no Jewish residents at all.”

Yotam BERGER: "Secret 1970 Document Confirms First West Bank Settlements Built on a Lie" (Haaretz, July 28, 2016): click here!

In minutes of meeting in then-defense minister Moshe Dayan’s office, top Israeli officials discussed how to violate international law in building settlement of Kiryat Arba, next to Hebron.

Robert FANTINA: "Israel Lines Its Pockets With Palestinian Aid — And The US Helps Israel Keep It That Way" MintPress News, July 25, 2016): click here!

Complicity with Israel’s occupation and corruption in Mr. Abbas’ PA play into another major roadblock on Palestine’s path to recovery: International funds meant for reconstruction efforts in Gaza and other forms of humanitarian aid are routinely diluted by Israel.

UNRWA is deeply concerned about the humanitarian impact of the closure applied by the Israeli authorities in the Hebron district, affecting in particular Fawwar refugee camp.

Basman ALASHI: "My Gaza hospital was destroyed. Why has the world stayed silent?" (The National, July 23, 2016): click here!

Two years ago, my hospital was destroyed. It was the only dedicated rehabilitation hospital in Gaza, a modern centre of care with 80 beds, a therapeutic garden and state-of-the-art equipment. Our patients are among Gaza’s most vulnerable residents; many are paralysed, some need round-the-clock care.

Israeli forces have arrested 81 Palestinian fishermen near the Gaza Strip during the first half of 2016, a new report revealed yesterday. The Palestinian Prisoners’ Centre for Studies said Israeli authorities deliberately target Gaza’s fishermen by shooting them or destroying their boats to further impose the blockade.

Obliterated Families is a newly released multimedia project produced by photographer Anne Paq and journalist Ala Qandil. Two years in the making, it profiles ten families from Gaza partially or entirely annihilated during the Israeli bombardment in the summer of 2014.

Five Palestinian civilians were injured by Israeli live fire during the pre-dawn hours of Monday, as Israeli forces carried out the punitive home demolition of Palestinian prisoner Bilal Ahmed Abu Zeid.

A few days ago, I was driving through Qalandiya checkpoint for the first time since I came back to Jerusalem. My dad, sitting next to me, had to yell “stop here!” at me as I was queuing behind a car at the checkpoint. "You’re too close,” he said, “stop and wait for them to call you, otherwise they’ll shoot you and not even care.”

On the occasion of International Population Day on Monday, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) revealed new data about the population in the occupied Palestinian territory, which it said now totaled 4.81 million people 2016.

Tamar FLESICHMAN: "IN PHOTOS: A life of constant dread for one Palestinian village" (+972, July 9, 2016): click here!

The West Bank village of Hizma, surrounded entirely by the separation wall, is the victim of daily harassment by the army and the police. That hasn’t stopped the residents from opening their homes and businesses to Israeli Jews — even the settlers who live next door.

Some 900 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue to require medical attention as a result of permanent disabilities they sustained during Israel’s devastating 51-day assault on the small territory that began on July 8, 2014, according to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

In 2002 the Israeli Government decided to construct “a barrier” separating the West Bank and Israel with the declared purpose of improving the security of Israel by preventing Palestinians from entering Israel without first being cleared at a checkpoint.

Nearly a decade and a half after he began serving multiple life sentences for his role in the killings of the second intifada, Marwan Barghouti is still seen – among most Palestinians, many Israelis and world leaders – as the man who could lead his people to independence. Through a mediator, Barghouti tells Haaretz that he remains a staunch proponent of the two-state solution and that he intends to run for Palestinian president should elections be held.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip expressed anger and dismay on Monday about the deal normalizing relations between Israel and Turkey that leaves them under a suffocating siege. An Israeli human rights group that monitors the decade-old Israeli blockade of Gaza has also confirmed that the deal does not end Israel’s tight control over the territory that has greatly exacerbated the devastation to Gaza’s economy and society from three major Israeli military assaults since 2008.

"Stand Up for Sussia and Against Israel's Demolition of Palestinian Villages" (Haaretz Editorial, June 21, 2016): click here!

Settler groups and their lawmakers have been pushing for more demolitions as part of their plan to annex Area C. It's not only Sussia and other villages that are at risk, but the possibility of a Palestinian state itself.

Amira HASS: "‘Israel Plans to Destroy Only Water Source of Shepherds in West Bank Village" (Haaretz, June 18, 2016): click here!

This, despite the fact that Israel’s coordinator of government activities in the territories (to which the Civil Administration is subordinate) promised representatives of international agencies that there would be no demolitions during the month of Ramadan, except for structures built during this time, Haaretz has learned.

Geneva - Damage to European Union-funded projects in Palestine during Israeli attacks and other incursions is nothing new. However, a new report from the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor finds that following the EU’s move last year to label Israeli settlement products, the number of union-funded projects demolished or confiscated by Israel increased dramatically.For the full report (pdf, 20p.): click here!

An $11-million farming project in the Jordan Valley, a $61,200 playground near Nablus and an elementary school serving a Bedouin community east of Jerusalem: all have been destroyed by Israel. These are just a few examples of the at least 150 European-funded structures in the occupied West Bank that Israel demolished in the first three months of 2016.

On Monday, Israeli security forces demolished a number homes in Jabal al Baba, a Bedouin community in Area C of the West Bank, close to East Jerusalem. They reportedly arrived at 5am, and disassembled seven EU-donated homes and confiscated materials for another three, displacing 49 Palestinians, including 22 children.

"It's Been a Decade. Open Gaza, the Palestinian Ghetto" (Haaretz Editorial, May 17, 2016): click here!

The closure of Gaza hasn't stopped the rockets or led to the overthrow of Hamas. Meanwhile, Israel uses it as a bargaining chip, knowing full well that justifications of security are meaningless.

“Israel Controls More than 85% of the Land of Historical Palestine” (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, May 15, 2016): click here!

The number of Palestinians worldwide has multiplied about nine-fold — Israel Controls More than 85% of the Land of Historical Palestine.

Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people seems indeed relentless. The gloves have come off, the masquerade of the peace talks is finally seen by most as a futile waste of time, as Israel bares its unadorned face as an expansionist settler-colonial state. Thus the new deputy foreign minister recently declared “this land is ours. All of it is ours,” while a growing number of Israeli politicians finally acknowledge what Palestinians have been saying for years: it is apartheid.

An Israeli investigation has revealed a 23-year old Palestinian woman and her 16-year old brother were killed last week at an army checkpoint in Jerusalem by civilian security contractors, not soldiers.

Israel’s justice minister announces a plan to apply Israeli law to parts of the West Bank, or in other words, annexation. By taking an incremental approach, she stands a pretty good chance of succeeding. Success, however, will expose the true nature of Israel’s discriminatory regime.

"On May Day in Palestine, High Unemployment and Harsh Working Conditions" (The Palestine Chronicle, May 1, 2016): click here!

As the world marks International Workers’ Day (May Day), laborers in the Palestinian territory continue to suffer from soaring unemployment, poverty, and other dire working conditions.

Israel’s relentlessly expanding settlement enterprise has had an enormous detrimental impact on the lives of millions of Palestinians. We have had our land stolen, our homes and crops destroyed, and our towns and villages cut off from one another and the outside world, turned into easily-controlled Bantustans divided by Israeli settlements, military bases, walls, and Israeli-only roads. In effect, Israel has created an apartheid colonial regime where Palestinians under occupation have no rights while Israeli settlers living nearby enjoy all the right and privileges of Israeli citizenship.

In spite of recent talks with Palestinian officials, Israeli armed forces will continue to intervene in parts of the occupied West Bank under full Palestinian Authority (PA) control, high-ranking Israeli officials said on Wednesday.

Franklin SPINNEY: "The Palestinian Question: Why the Two-State Solution is Kaput". Water and the Creeping Annexation of the West Bank (CounterPunch, 20 April, 2016): click here!

Israel does not seem inclined to halt its hot pursuits against Palestinian fugitives anytime soon, amid the ongoing intifada and the helpless PA’s failure to end it or contain it, neither politically nor militarily. As a result, what is remaining of the PA’s imaginary sovereignty over the West Bank, as per the Oslo Accord, is gradually waning.

Addameer considers the actions of the Palestinian Security Forces to be in contravention with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as well as the Convention Against Torture (CAT), both of which the Palestinian Authority is a party.

Israel has started construction on a new part of its controversial separation barrier which would isolate Palestinian communities from their olive groves in the occupied West Bank. The construction began with the lifting of several eight-metre-high blocks expected to complete the 670km (420 mile) barrier.

Comparison of Native Americans and Palestinians has become increasingly common. Thus arises a corresponding need to assess the problems and prospects of comparative analysis. Because I teach American Indian and Indigenous Studies in the Arab World, I’ve been thinking frequently about how we might productively engage Natives from spaces of Palestine solidarity.

For decades, intellectuals tried and failed to explain the root of the conflict as a settler-colonial project. Now at last that paradigm has come into fashion in academia; and it is acute and powerful, and helps explain the relevance of Palestine to the Middle East and the world at large.

OCHA field reports indicate that during 2015, the Israeli army destroyed some 170 housing units in Area C and East Jerusalem, along with shops and other commercial facilities. Israel razed orchards, burned wheat fields and demolished cisterns, wells, an elementary school (donor built), a greenhouse, a plant nursery, workshops, stores, outdoor kitchens, latrines, rest shelters and more.

About 80 percent of all water drilled in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley is consumed by Israel and its settlements, all of which are illegal under international law. Many Palestinian wells and springs have dried up due to deep water drillings by Israel’s national water company Mekorot and agri-food companies.

The European Parliament (EP’s) Delegation for relations with Palestine, expressed alarm at the deteriorating situation on the ground, calling for an immediate stop to Israeli expansion of settlements, and demolitions, said a press statement by EP delegation... On 18 January Foreign Ministers in the Council conclusions confirmed the EU's firm opposition to Israel's settlement policy and actions taken in this context, including demolitions and confiscation, evictions, forced transfers or restrictions of movement and access.

The soldiers, stationed behind the border fence, east of the al-Boreij refugee camp, in central Gaza, fired dozens of rounds of live ammunition into Palestinian farmlands, forcing the Palestinians to leave. In addition, Israeli navy ships fired several live rounds on Palestinian fishing boats, in the Sudaniyya area, in Gaza, causing significant damage to at least one boat, and forcing the fishers back to shore.

February 8th marks one hundred days since Israeli forces declared the Tel Rumeida neighborhood and the adjacent portion of Shuhada Street a “closed military zone,” requiring residents to register with the Israeli military and be assigned numbers in order to be allowed to access their homes while all other Palestinians and international human rights defenders are barred from entering the area. On February 5th the Israeli military issued an order officially extending the closed military zone until the 1st of March, with the possibility for further renewal.

When 70 percent of the Palestinian population “live in conditions in which their freedom, honour, physical integrity, capacity to work, acquire property, marry and, more generally, plan for the future are alienated to the will and power of their Israeli masters, these conditions can only be named by their proper name: conditions of slavery.”

Miko PELED: "The emperor has no clothes: The West Bank, settlements and the two State Solution " (American Herald Tribune, Jan 30, 2016): click here!

Sadly, over the last seventy years Israel has had many successes at the expense of the Palestinian people. But the one success that is the most remarkable is getting Palestinians and the world to buy into the notion that the occupation of Palestine began in 1967, and that therefore, the solution to the Palestinian question is what is known as the two State Solution. This is a manipulation of reality that would make any magician proud.

They set out to stab or run people over by car because they’re conquerors. They set out to kill their conquerors. They chose violence as a means of resisting a more pernicious violence, that of the occupation. They wanted to hurt Israelis, especially soldiers and settlers, because of the occupation, not because they’re Jewish. Their Jewishness has nothing to do with it. For the Palestinians, there’s no difference between a soldier who’s Jewish, Druze or Bedouin and a settler from the tribe of Menashe... The thought that dozens of Palestinians have already set out to commit spontaneous acts of stabbing or car-ramming, with hundreds, maybe thousands or tens of thousands considering doing the same, should have provoked some thinking in Israel. Not the thinking of a victim who is being attacked again, but a consideration of what drives desperate children and adults to do this, in the knowledge that their chances of survival are slim. But this might only raise questions that Israelis run away from as is from a fire.

Eyal PRESS: "When ‘Made in Israel’ Is a Human Rights Abuse" (The New York Times, Jan 26, 2016): click here!

...The more the line between Israel and the occupied territories is blurred, the more likely the rest of the world will be to question the legitimacy of not just the settlements but Israel itself. In the long run, this will not prevent Israel from being depicted as a pariah state, but instead will provide powerful ammunition to those who see it as such.

Ramzy BAROUD: "Gaza Speaks: This is What the Decade-long Siege Has Done to Us" (The Palestine Chronicle, Jan 26, 2016): click here!

Whenever Mariam Aljamal’s children hear the sound of thunder at night, they wet their beds. Their reaction is almost instinctive, and is shared by a large number of children throughout the Gaza Strip.

The irony is that "settlement blocs" are cited by Israeli officials and apologists as evidence of the feasibility of a viable Palestinian state, when in fact, their establishment on the ground has been designed to preclude precisely that scenario. The creation of the concept must not be allowed to confuse: the "blocs"must be seen for what they are.

Léopold LAMBERT: "Towards a Post-Apartheid Palestine: Atlas of the Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem" (The Funambulist, Jan 22, 2016): click here!

The following Atlas is therefore less the inventory of evidences of the current state of apartheid — although it clearly shows an important part of its materialization — than a toolbox to imagine a post-apartheid Palestine scenario in which the problem/opportunity constituted by the settlement can be fully investigated.

The Israeli regime has confirmed plans to seize a large tract of fertile Palestinian land for the purpose of expanding its illegal settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

"Special Focus: A Review of the Situation in the OPT in 2015 " (Al-Haq, Jan 20, 2016): click here!

In 2015, Israel’s intentions towards the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and the Palestinian population were made clear through the unabashed extreme rhetoric of government officials and a deepening of various practices that violate Palestinian rights.

Today, the Coordinator for Humanitarian and UN Development Activities for the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), Robert Piper, and the Director of UNRWA Operations West Bank, Felipe Sanchez, called for an immediate end to Israeli plans to transfer Palestinian Bedouin currently living within the occupied Palestinian territory in the Jerusalem area.

The international rights group said in a statement that Israel's violations of Palestinian rights -- as well as international humanitarian law -- were "intrinsic to abusive, harmful, and longstanding policies in the West Bank."

A rarely told story of the 1948 war that founded Israel concerns Nazareth’s survival. It is the only Palestinian city in what is today Israel that was not ethnically cleansed during the year-long fighting. Other cities, such as Jaffa, Lydd, Ramleh, Haifa and Acre, now have small Palestinian populations that mostly live in ghetto-like conditions in what have become Jewish cities. Still others, like Tiberias and Safad, have no Palestinians left in them at all.

Charlotte SILVER: "Jerusalem children squeezed out of school by Israeli discrimination" (The Electronic Intifada, 3 Jan, 2016): click here!

Every year, around 300 boys in the Jabal al-Mukabir neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem complete middle school and are ready to advance to the next grade. But fewer than half of them are able to find a spot in the only secondary school in the neighborhood, Sakhnin High School. Many just drop out altogether.

Jacob BURNS: "This Is What Being ‘Tough on Terror’ Looks Like In East Jerusalem" (Huffington Post, 29 Oct, 2015): click here!

At the southern edge of Jabal Mukaber, a Palestinian neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, the hills form a wide, natural amphitheatre. Here olive groves adorn the gentle slopes, horses whinny, and birds flit out from the eaves to play in the evening sky. The views out towards Herod’s great fortress Herodion are breathtaking.

Since its inception, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been heavily handicapped. Israel not only failed to transfer control over the powers and resources necessary for governance: It effectively transferred the burden of governance to the PA.

"One Rule, Two Legal Systems: Israel’s Regime of Laws in the West Bank". A New Report from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Nov 24, 2014: click here!

A new report published by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) outlines the nature of the legal regime currently operating in the West Bank. Two systems of law are applied in a single territory: one – a civilian legal system for Israeli citizens, and a second – a military court system for Palestinian residents. The result: institutionalized discrimination.

We are doctors and scientists, who spend our lives developing means to care and protect health and lives. We are also informed people; we teach the ethics of our professions, together with the knowledge and practice of it. We all have worked in and known the situation of Gaza for years.

Gideon LEVY: "So These Are Israel's New Heroes?"Israel's recent military operations in Palestinian hospitals are a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, and make you wonder how low the country can sink (Haaretz, Nov 21, 2015).

Noam SHEIZAF: "Jerusalem, in context"(+972, October 19, 2015). "The current events in Jerusalem have a political history and context. Attempts to attribute the violence to some kind of Palestinian pathology while ignoring other factors is a recipe for making things worse."